


The Crab

by greywash



Series: "build your wings" and associated paraphernalia [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Grief, Loneliness, Narrative hijinx, Pining, Post-Reichenbach, oh sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 09:20:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12767877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: Sherlock visits a friend in Amsterdam.[October 2013.]





	The Crab

**Author's Note:**

> This is in the same universe as "[build your wings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4100593/)" (which: [much like the last time I posted one of these little ficlets](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11310609), no, byw is not abandoned, I've been finishing my thesis, and I wrote this to warm myself back up for pt. 56 \o/). However, _unlike_ the last time I posted one of these, this is very intimately tied to some of the "build your wings" backstory and, while it's not exactly spoilery, will probably make more sense if you've read through byw 51.
> 
>  **None of my usual warnings** for this fic. My full warning policy is in my [profile](http://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/profile#warnings) and I also am totally willing to reply to [emails](mailto:greywash@gmail.com) or **[non-anonymous](http://fizzygins.tumblr.com/ask)** Tumblr asks if you have any specific warning-related questions that you would like me to answer.

Slantwise the crab advances. Poets,  
philosophers, the body  
politic share different aspects  
of this problem.

\- Jeffrey Yang, "Crab," [_An Aquarium_](http://www.powells.com/book/aquarium-9781555975135/1-5)

~ ~ ~

 **Amsterdam**  
**Thursday 17 October**  
**2013**

Scattered as if snowstorming: outside the window grey wings and black. Coffee-burnt bitter Sherlock inhales, closing his eyes. his heart his heart his heart. A horn goes, at the end of the street; under his back the damp-wrinkled sheet, on the undersides of his arms his skin prickling dry no heat.

"Mm, _very_ artistic": low, mouth curved. His, too, to match. Squeaking the mattress dips as he opens his eyes—wax, bitter; coffee, lipstick. The lines around her mouth: lovely, really. She sits against his belly, her thighs still wet, and he holds out his cigarette. 

She squints at him but takes it, leaning back when he bends up his knees. "You're a dreadful influence," she says, "I've quit"; and takes a drag. 

The hair on her legs is dark and soft. He pets it the wrong way and she shivers, sliding them apart. The back of his throat dark; animal taste. Eva sitting upon him a damp wet smear on his skin and watching. Watching. Forgers know how to see, he knows. A cliche. Dangerous. 

"What is it this time?" she asks.

He shrugs. Almost. Scrunching sheet and pillow his shoulder. Prickling up. "I need a few new passports, that's all."

She takes another drag, then leans over him to drop the butt in the coffee cup on the windowsill. "How many?" she asks, her soft breast just brushing his face. 

"Ah—five." A curious sensation: prickling, almost arousal. His cock half-hard against her bottom as she leans back. "Three EU," he explains. "French, German, British. Swiss, if you can manage it. And, ah. Canadian. Or American."

She smirks. "Have you learnt at last that trying pass as an Australian is a mistake?" 

"It went fine," says Sherlock; then realizes his mistake: bright eyes warm in her beaky lined face. He can feel himself flushing: humiliating, hot. Red all over his face and his shoulders, splotchy and ridiculous. His fingertips twitch on her thighs.

"Oh, Lucas," she chides. Bends to kiss him: his cheek. It's just getting worse: breathe he swallows swallows breathe. "I am always happy to make for you any number of passports," she says, close and quiet, "for only a _very_ little bit of embarrassment, and five thousand euros each."

"Highway robbery," he says; she kisses him in apology.

He likes kissing Eva. Her mouth is bigger than a lot of women's and less slippery. He told her that, once, just after: unguarded, a mistake; but she'd just laughed. When he'd tried to explain she'd waved a hand and said, _Please, it isn't as though I don't know_ , and he hadn't responded. He hadn't wanted to discuss what she thought she knew. He hadn't wanted to explain.

She sits up, slow. Eyes dark and heavy. He could touch her, he thinks. Get the lube from beside the coffee cup on the windowsill and pet it all over her until she was sodden gasping begging for him begging to be split open bent over for his stop. Hands on her hips. She is stroking her fingers through his chest hair. Gentle. Light. "Like a boy," she says, which is untrue; "Barely shows," which isn't. Her eyes are _very_ dark indeed.

"It seems that you find this appealing," he observes.

"Mm," she says. Noncommittal. She brushes her thumb over his nipple and he is careful with his breathing. "You can pretend I'm one of Tom's friends," he suggests: her right eyebrow raises: Tom is nineteen. "Home with him for the hols," he explains. "Anxious to get on your good side." His thumbs are sliding. Wild black curling hair, the damp creases of her thighs.

"Pervert," she says, not unadmiringly. "Your hands—," she suggests; and he slides his fingers into her pubic hair. 

She sighs. Predictable: face slackening. Hair frizzing all around her black and grey speckled as if snowstorming. He cups her in his hand, a warm wet soft mound, a living thing. When he curls his fingers up they taste slick. He thinks about it, sometimes. He folds his thumb down and pets two fingers to meet it: the hot-slipping membrane wet of the rim of her vagina, the hardening nub of her clit. She breathes in, breathes out. Rocking above him, moving with him, gentle, slow. A slow dusky pink creeping up her arms, her throat, her cheeks. She's not pretty enough for it to be attractive. He wants her: he's seen photos; even when she was a girl, she was unbeautiful. Uncompromising. He rubs her slow-gentle-slow-gentle-slow for a long, long time.

"All right," she says, breathless. Reaching out over above him. "All right." This time when her nipple brushes his cheek he turns to meet it, lick it, suck it in: tongue hot-hard brown-crinkling skin while she pants pushing his fingers in against her spreading her for his stop. She hunches: her shoulders. Panting while he fucks her with his hand.

He opens his mouth. Tongue. Turning: "Give it to me," he says, "your cock," and she groans, low and heavy, arms shaking, grinding her wet cunt down on his hand. "Give it to me so I can—" and she gets herself back up shaking, face flushed her shoulders, stomach knotted pooling liquidhot kneeling up with heavy blackpurple silicone and the tube so he grabs it, twisting the lid with his teeth so he can—just—keep— _pushing_ moaning shoulders—hunching her shoulders her bony shoulders her bony shoulders open-mouthed panting while Sherlock's heart pound-pounding in his throat. Wet his hand his fingers wet and wetter get her wetter get her wet so wet he could better when it's wetter better to slick her dripping with half the tube long arms he could her arms around his he rubs her hard thick clit with his thumb and fucks her three-fingered while she fumbles shiny-faced gasping with her vibrator and then—pushes it— _back_ and he rubs the taut fuzzy stretch of her perineum with the tip—just—pushing— _in_ and helpless he rubs his wet fingers over the clench of her arsehole to get her hotter panting when she turns it on drilling into him open carved open his shoulders stop. 

" _Fuck_ ," gasped she is gasping. "Fuck— _fuck_ —"

Sherlock inhales. Inhales. Heart pounding focus: spreads her arsecheeks open rubbing at-against him can't while she rides the slicked-wet ridges of her vibrator on his belly oh God. Hard he's so hard so hard to think, to be anything but—he pushes, she likes that. Groaning arms shaking braced on his sh-shoulders while she fucks her cunt a half-inch deep with the curving bulbous tip and he could just—stop. Stop. Stop. He holds her open; she rubs off on him, shuddering-shivery dripping throb of her toy. She likes two fingers in her arsehole but he can't. Fuck. ed. He is—fucking her, her toy his fingers, shoulders her—half-fucked half-open. Coming grinding down against him sobbing stop. His shoulders: agonized. Couldn't see his face. 

Sherlock closes his eyes.

After. "What happened?" she asks. 

"Nothing," Sherlock says. "That was great." Honestly.

"Since May, I mean," she says. Gentle. Sweet. And—absurd. His throat closing up; it shouldn't. Eva lying beside him on her back still breathless: he shakes his head. "Oh, Lucas," she says, and then sighs.

Sherlock breathes. It's—it's just how she is. How Eva is. It is a part of her Eva-ness: _Oh, Lucas_ , she likes to sigh. He turns up and she smirks at him and takes all Mycroft's money and lets him go down on her and here and there, _Oh, Lucas_ , she says (as close as she ever gets to maternal, he suspects) and then sighs. He does—he does know, he does understand why. Eva thinks it's because he's an infant but she's wrong, really. At nineteen, maybe. At thirty-seven, not quite. _Oh, Lucas_. She'd even said it when he'd turned up, hadn't she. _Oh, Lucas, I'm an old woman_ , she'd chided, when he'd stood too close to her in the entry half-panting and then closer and then closer until lifting, he could lift—until he could've lifted her legs around him leather jacket dragged down brown skirt push aside and in push in bend—over in full view of the—but _oh lucas im an old woman_ as though as though and then upstairs she'd straddled his face ground down moaning extravagantly gasping-muffled half-drowning: squirming thinking shoulders his shoulders stop his shoulders stop his stop shoulders stop, stop, _Christ_ : knives all over his throat and his chest while frantic he licked and licked stop her warm heavy body furred thighs and stop the narrow rangy solidity of her and it stopped almost nearly in Amsterdam as she'd kept his head pinned flat to her bed. Calling herself an old woman, _Oh, Lucas_ , she'd sighed. Tom is nineteen and Lotte thirty-seven which makes Eva, by Sherlock's best reckoning, fifty-six. Not in the grave yet, unlike him. 

"I can have them for you by the end of the weekend," she says, finally, pushing up. Her long bare back straight legs bony shoulders. She gathers her hair up, snowstorming: "Stay a while."

He nods. "I could make coffee," he says, sitting up; and she says, "Yes."

**Author's Note:**

> Aside: there is a second poem about the crab in _An Aquarium_ , which is [on my Tumblr](https://fizzygins.tumblr.com/post/167666374962/jellyfish).
> 
> This story also has [rebloggable Tumblr presence](https://fizzygins.tumblr.com/post/167666478107/bad-news-no-build-your-wings-update-today), if you are into that kind of thing.


End file.
